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WORLD> America
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A manic Monday for Obama
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-01-20 07:47
In a time of profound crisis, Barack Obama yesterday called Americans to service and optimism, darting through the capital for a blizzard of events on the observation of the 80th birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The president-elect and an army of aides and volunteers who have planned his inauguration today have built excitement and expectation about the historic swearing-in of the country's first African American president. The festivities have enlivened otherwise staid Washington DC and seized the imagination of a nation in the grips of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression, even as it fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obamas and vice president-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, were joining volunteers in a community renovation project in the Washington area to honor King, who was assassinated 40 years ago. Yesterday was a federal holiday in the US to commemorate the Jan 15, 1929, birth of King, who advocated peaceful resistance and equality among all races. His work blazed a trail for Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas. After dark yesterday, Obama was expected to attend dinners honoring what his transition team termed "three Americans whose lifetime of public service has been enhanced by a dedication to bipartisan achievement". These included Senator John McCain, Obama's vanquished Republican opponent for the presidency. Separate dinners were to be held to honor McCain as well as Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and Biden, for his long years in the US Senate. It was Lincoln, Obama's fellow Illinoisan, who opened the door on the racial divide for African-Americans nearly 150 years. The 47-year-old president-elect stood before the crowd on the National Mall as a testament to America's lumbering and imperfect progress toward racial equality. When he takes the presidential oath of office at noon (1700 GMT) today, Obama said he and the nation would bask in the dream that motivated his run for the country's highest office: "a belief that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together ... then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process." Obama, Biden and their families arrived on Saturday by train from Philadelphia, a symbolic journey recalling that of Lincoln in equally troubled times in 1861 before the outbreak of the Civil War. The president-elect and Biden began on Sunday with a somber wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Obama and Biden stood, hands over hearts, as a bugler played Taps, the military call sounded over soldiers' graves. Somewhere between 1 million and 2 million people are expected to make their way to Washington for the swearing in ceremony and inaugural parade. Nearly a quarter million tickets have been issued for the festivities at the Capitol. Although he may not get to bed before 3 am after the inaugural balls, Obama plans to make Wednesday, his first full day as president, a jam-packed affair of prayer, diplomacy, war discussions and welcoming hundreds of visitors to the White House. The new president will start Wednesday at Washington's National Cathedral for the National Prayer Service, which dates to George Washington's time. Perhaps most importantly, however, will be Obama's plan to fulfill his pledge to assemble military leaders to take a hard look at starting the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. |
